this post was submitted on 25 Jul 2025
44 points (95.8% liked)

PC Gaming

11916 readers
318 users here now

For PC gaming news and discussion. PCGamingWiki

Rules:

  1. Be Respectful.
  2. No Spam or Porn.
  3. No Advertising.
  4. No Memes.
  5. No Tech Support.
  6. No questions about buying/building computers.
  7. No game suggestions, friend requests, surveys, or begging.
  8. No Let's Plays, streams, highlight reels/montages, random videos or shorts.
  9. No off-topic posts/comments, within reason.
  10. Use the original source, no clickbait titles, no duplicates. (Submissions should be from the original source if possible, unless from paywalled or non-english sources. If the title is clickbait or lacks context you may lightly edit the title.)

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

Like many people, I've been thinking about physical media lately, and how our entertainment items -- movies, albums, books -- used to be things that sat on a shelf that someone else could see and say, "Hey I like this thing on your shelf."

PC games were one of those things, once. I have a few. And I've scrounged them up from their various moving boxes and parents' houses to see if they still work.

Does anyone here still play a game from an optical drive? A game where your regularly-played copy isn't the Steam version?

For me, Morrowind was the last game that I was still playing on a disc. I have newer games on discs, but just played those once or twice and then put them back on the shelf. But I was still playing Morrowind from a CD up until 2023, when it went on sale on Steam for $1, so I bought it. I almost didn't get it, since I liked the fact that I was still playing a game on a CD.

I plan on taking inventory of which games still work and what it takes to install them today.

What were (are?) some of your favorites?

top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world 26 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Bruh I haven't had a computer with a disc drive in like...15 years.

Last game I played with a disc was disc golf.

[–] tuckerm@feddit.online 3 points 1 week ago

I almost went that route, but kept moving my disc drive from one PC to the next just for Morrowind. I didn't have room for it in my latest build, though (I put in a tower cooler for the first time), so I bought an external DVD drive.

So, how far can you throw those DVDs?

[–] jordanlund@lemmy.world 5 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Guild Wars 2 was on disc for me.

[–] lunarul@lemmy.world 3 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

I have that disk too. But I don't need it if I want to install and play the game today. Same with my Elder Scrolls Online disk or my Assassin's Creed Unity disk. Neither GW2 nor ESO will even play with just the data on the original disks, forcing updates before becoming playable. Not sure about ACU though.

[–] Kolanaki@pawb.social 5 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (2 children)

I haven't had a disk drive in my PC for over 10 years now. It's a PITA even finding an inexpensive case that has front bays these days.

[–] jinwk00@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 week ago

Why not USB-based disk reader?

[–] tuckerm@feddit.online 2 points 1 week ago

Yeah, they definitely aren't seen as a necessity anymore.

However, the Silverstone FLP01 was mentioned in another community around here and I was so tempted to get one. At $150, it's not exactly inexpensive, and I already have a perfectly good case (Fractal Design Core 500), but man I want one. The "floppy disk drives" are doors that flip down: the top one reveals an optical drive, and the bottom one reveals the USB ports.

[–] MITM0@lemmy.world 3 points 1 week ago
[–] schnurrito@discuss.tchncs.de 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Last one must have been GTA 4 (I've meanwhile bought this on Steam so I can play it without) or Crazy Taxi (came with a cereal box in my childhood).

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] swordgeek@lemmy.ca 2 points 1 week ago

I've got a portable DVD player, and I'm going to use it to install the original Psychonauts onto my son's computer, so he can see what the meat circus was like before they softened it.

[–] wirelesswire@lemmy.zip 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Starcraft 2 for me. I haven't had an optical drive in my pc for probably 10 years or so. The last "physical" game I bought was Mass Effect Andromeda, and it was just a box with a download code inside.

PC gamers were incentivized to move away from optical media asap, since optical drives read slowly compared to HDDs, and SSDs are even faster.

[–] tuckerm@feddit.online 2 points 1 week ago

Yeah, I had forgotten how slow an optical drive was, and how that was usually the limiting factor. I installed Rainbow Six: Rogue Spear from the original CD a couple days ago, and it took about 20 minutes to install on my current PC. I'm pretty sure that's about how long it took in 1999, too.

Downloading it from Steam takes about 10 seconds.

[–] MudMan@fedia.io 2 points 1 week ago

I still have some floppies in working order, even.

But no, I don't play them regularly. It's just easier to make a backup that doesn't need a disk in the drive. Even most of my retro PCs these days run out of a large-ish hard drive replacement, so keeping games outside their unreliable original media and the original media elsewhere is a better alternative.

It's a bit different on consoles where carts are harder to duplicate and ingest, as well as being more reliable and loading faster. Floppies and optical media, particularly when you can access the files, less so.

[–] tiredofsametab@fedia.io 2 points 1 week ago

I literally cannot remember the last time. This PC doesn't have any optical drives and I've had it for like 7 years now. I did use a USB optical drive once to install a driver for something. I can't even remember the last game I purchased that had a physical disc, honestly. I haven't bought a game requiring a disc since living in Japan so that's definitely a decade. Probably around 15 years, if I had to guess, and maybe even longer than that.

[–] darkdemize@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I think the last disc-based game I played was Neverwinter Nights 2. Either that or the Command and Conquer Collection. That was probably around 2014.

[–] tuckerm@feddit.online 1 points 1 week ago

Nice. I was recently browsing this used bookstore near me, and C&C: Generals was sitting on the shelf in the music CD section, so I bought it. That was what got me thinking about my existing physical game collection.

[–] Whostosay@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)
[–] tuckerm@feddit.online 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I should still have that somewhere as well. That was one I didn't find, but it should be around.

Do you need a battle.net account to play Diablo 2, or can you just install and play offline if you only want to play singleplayer? I haven't been able to find a clear answer about this, since everyone talking about it these days is talking about the download-only version.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] lordnikon@lemmy.world 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

installed from disc starfleet academy and mechwarrior 2 last week with lutrus.

[–] tuckerm@feddit.online 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Sweet! Lutris is amazing, I tried it for the first time a couple days ago. One of my physical games is Rainbow Six: Rogue Spear, which would not run on my Windows 10 PC, but runs just fine on my Linux PC through Lutris.

[–] lordnikon@lemmy.world 1 points 1 week ago

yeah i used the files and got Starfleet Academy runnings on my steam deck.

[–] setsneedtofeed@lemmy.world 2 points 1 week ago

I buy and play a bunch of old games from an EBay seller who sends both the original disc and a disc with a copy of the game that loads dosbox stuff or whatever else to make it work easily on a modern system without fiddling around. It's pretty great.

I have a bunch of strategy and sim games.

[–] PattyMcB@lemmy.world 2 points 1 week ago

I finally just threw out my Diablo 2 and xpac discs. None of the computers in my home have optical drives anymore. I only keep the Blu-ray player around for my collectibles, and I rarely risk wearing them out just for a watch

[–] Blackmist@feddit.uk 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Probably Crysis.

Long enough ago that my DVD drive had sealed shut since then and I had to use a paperclip to open it.

[–] tuckerm@feddit.online 2 points 1 week ago

Nice. I had borrowed a friend's physical copy of Crysis, and that's how I played it back in the day.

[–] Angry_Autist@lemmy.world 2 points 1 week ago

Half Life orange box, the last physical media I ever bought. 2009-10 ish. Still have the cosmetics for tf2

[–] Poopfeast420@discuss.tchncs.de 2 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

I recently checked my box with old game CDs and DVDs, just out of curiosity, not because I wanted to play something. Most of the stuff is just sentimental value/nostalgia, but there's one promo disc/game, I tried to archive because I found nothing about it on the net, but I couldn't even read it. Others also have read errors, but I don't know if a better drive could still work (just have a cheap external one).

I think the last PC game I bought on disc was SC2: HotS, but I don't even know if I ever used them, since you can just download the game, after you've added it to your Battlenet account. Definitely haven't used game discs since 2014, because I remember building a PC then, putting in my old drive, but then I gave it away, because I just never needed it.

[–] calamitycastle@lemmy.world 2 points 1 week ago

I remember finally building a new PC that was halfway decent and wanting to play some quake 3 mods. So this would have been around 2005??

Broadband was here so I wanted to take advantage of that sweet low ping but needed a physical copy of the game for the mods to work.

Even then it was hard to source a game disc but I got it and had a few years of fun playing urban terror... I can't really be bothered with online shooters now but back then it was simple, quick and fun. There's too much going on in things like Apex and Overwatch for me.

Also my PC basically has a console setup in the living room and I play with a switch controller, so I'd get destroyed anyway!

[–] Malgas@beehaw.org 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Not sure what the last one was, but the last couple PC games I bought physical copies of could be installed from the disc, but also had Steam keys in the box and then didn't require the disc to play.

[–] tuckerm@feddit.online 1 points 1 week ago

The most recent ones I've bought were only a Steam key in the box, and the DVD simply had a Steam installer on it. Nice that some have both, I haven't actually seen one of those.

[–] Rocketpoweredgorilla@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 week ago

I dusted off my old xbox 360 a month ago and played a few games on it. Aside from that, not for quite a few years now.

[–] Thoath@leminal.space 1 points 1 week ago

Back in my day :33 we had to download the world's most prolific marriage ender from 7 different disks over probably the course of 3+ days (wow)

[–] neon_nova@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Now I want to install a game to a disk and run it from the disk drive, my dad’s old desktop has a drive. I wonder if it can burn dvds.

Maybe I could install stardew valley to the disk.

[–] tuckerm@feddit.online 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I've been wanting to do this, too, for games that I bought on Steam. Like, make a bootable Linux DVD that has Steam and the game preinstalled on it, with Steam already logged in as my account.

[–] neon_nova@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 week ago (2 children)

I was thinking it would be easier with gog games.

You can just burn the install directory to a disk and then insert the disk and launch the game without launchers

[–] thingsiplay@beehaw.org 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Some Steam games can be played without Steam. Some require more and others less or none work to achieve that. GOG is the better choice for this task, but if you already have Steam game that could work for this, maybe no need to rebuy it on GOG. I was thinking of doing something similar to archive what can be archived, but never got around doing it. Here some resources:

[–] neon_nova@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I don’t think cds and dvds hold data for too long. I guess it’s better than a hard drive.

[–] thingsiplay@beehaw.org 2 points 1 week ago

There were special long lived BlueRay format https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-DISC . I was thinking of getting into, but they were expensive when I looked at it years ago. With 100 GB per disc, this might be a good solution for longtime archive (but you need the reader too...).

As for the CDs and DVDs, the longevity also highly depends on the burner, the blank disc and maybe the software and settings you used at that time. A pressed CD that you buy and its not burned can hold data for very long time, and is much more durable than your burned ones. At least compared to a mechanical hard drive you don't need to reuse (rewrite) to not loose data. But a hard drive can hold so much data.

[–] tuckerm@feddit.online 2 points 1 week ago

Oh dang, that is a good idea.

[–] spankmonkey@lemmy.world 1 points 1 week ago

The last game that I remember that needed a disc to play was Battlefield 1942 and I made a virtual drive with an ISO so I didn't need to put the stupid disc in every time and listen to it spin up. Current PC doesn't have a drive at all.

While I think a lot of the old box art was neat and all, I don't miss the physical requirements that took up space and all the manual updates and whatnot. Absolutely love steam's digital store and if that ever shits the bed and there isn't an alternate I will just stop PC gaming because the effort to manage all that stuff isn't worth it any more. Music and movies are the same, the physical media was nice for its time but I don't need to interact with it to use it anymore.

[–] thingsiplay@beehaw.org 1 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

The last time I played a PC game on a physical disc? Can I cheat a little bit here? I found a self burned CD from old early 2008 or earlier days. There were a few RPG Maker 2000 games on it, which I downloaded from internet cafes, such as Vampires Dawn (back then, when only a German version was available for the first game in series). And I played a few of them last year with an open source RPG Maker player called EasyRPG, but with RetroArch.

So yes, I played PC games in 2024 from a physical disc. But I leave it to you, if you count that. :D

[–] tuckerm@feddit.online 2 points 1 week ago

I'd say that absolutely counts!

[–] Hexarei@beehaw.org 1 points 1 week ago

My last physical media was the PC version of Titanfall, played in 2022 or so via USB disc drive. was surprised to find the entire game actually on the disc. Was pretty cool.

[–] k0e3@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 week ago

I think it might be Star Craft for me.

[–] AceFuzzLord@lemmy.zip 1 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

I don't have many disc based PC games anymore. Last I played one was less than a month ago ( don't know exactly how long ago ) and it was Luxor. I have a few others on disc, but I either don't have them installed or haven't played them in a while.

Not including Luxor because I already listed it, I also currently have Super Collapse, Morrowind and Oblivion ( both with expansions ), Brok The Investigator ( have it on Steam so I don't play the disk version or use the official collectors edition USB containing an installer either ), Rollercoaster Tycoon 2 and one of the expansions, some Dosney rollercoaster builder game that is pretty bad, and a normal blackjack game.

As for my absolute favorite, that's the easiest question ever: Rollercoaster Tycoon 3 Platinum.

I also have another one that I loved that I cannot remember or find basically anything about it anywhere in the web because it was probably some demo to a full game that wasn't out or didn't release. The whole thing was a mini-golf like hole where it starts you off in front of a drive-in movie theater with cars parked parallel to the screen, like they're parking in a parking lot at a grocers. You had to hit the ball up a ramp and into the screen, which was showing a black and white swamp film. You'd be sent into the movie and had to put around the water to get to the hole. Camera wouldn't move unless you entered a different area. Anybody know literally anything about that?

[–] Arcane2077@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 week ago

Peter Pan in Disney's Return to Never Land (2002).

A friend brought it over and, as was usually the case, I burned a copy to keep for myself. It was my first encounter with DRM, and for completely unrelated reasons, the last time I interacted with physical game media of any kind.

[–] freeman@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 week ago

Very few games were playable from a CD (thrash loading speed).Usually the CD was required after install for DRM purposes only.

load more comments
view more: next ›